1238871 - Tabs from a shutdown device are still displayed in Synced Tabs list

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Firefox :: Sync, defect, P1)

Description

[Vasilica Tamas, QA [:vtamas]]

Reproducible on: Firefox 46.0a1 and Firefox 45.0a2 across all platforms

STR
1.Use '-no-remote -p' to start Firefox with two separate profiles, A and B.
2.Login on both profiles with the same Firefox account.
3.On profile A, ensure that at least “Tabs” sync option is checked in about:preferences#sync 
4.Open a few tabs on profile A and go to Panel Menu -> Synced Tabs.
5.On profile B, having at least “Tabs” sync option checked, click on Panel Menu -> Synced Tabs.
6.Close profile A.
7.Check the Synced Tabs from profile B.

ER
Profile A tabs automatically disappear from Profile B Synced list once the first profile is closed.

AR
The tabs from profile A are still displayed in profile B even after the first profile is closed (or first device disconnected).


Additional notes:
- This issue is reproducible on Firefox 46.0a1(2016-01-11), Firefox 45.0a2 (2016-01-11) under Windows 10 64-bit, Ubuntu 14.04 64-bit and Mac OS X 10.10.5.

Comment 1

[Vasilica Tamas, QA [:vtamas]]

Discussed with Mark on IRC, and concluded that in fact, this is an intended behavior.

Comment 2

[Chris Karlof [:ckarlof]]

I wouldn't call it intended, but it's not trivially addressed. I'm going to re-open, because it's a quality issue I think we'll want to track and eventually address.

Comment 4

[Lina Butler [:lina]]

I think bug 1250531 handles the disconnect case, and bug 1287687 hides stale devices that haven't synced in a while. The close case is trickier; we don't want to block shutdown waiting for a tab sync. Unless I'm misunderstanding the bug, this doesn't seem particularly actionable. :-(

Vasilica, Mark: what do you think? Is it acceptable that old tabs from a closed profile might still show up on other devices?

Comment 5

[Mark Hammond (PTO; back Oct-3) [:markh] [:mhammond]]

(In reply to Kit Cambridge [:kitcambridge] from comment #4)
> Vasilica, Mark: what do you think? Is it acceptable that old tabs from a
> closed profile might still show up on other devices?

I think that behaviour is desired for a profile being normally shutdown (but *not* in the disconnected case - but IIUC that's not what we are talking about here). If I shutdown my Firefox before leaving work, I'd still expect to be able to open tabs from that device when I get home. This is particularly true for users who have Firefox restore their session on startup - the tabs will still be open next time they start the browser.

I guess it could be argued that users that do not restore their session shouldn't see these tabs (as when they next reopen Firefox those tabs will not be there) but (a) I don't think that's worth doing and (b) it would be almost impossible to implement reliably (and (c), for all we know those users will go ahead and hit "restore previous session" next time it starts up anyway.)

(In reply to Chris Karlof [:ckarlof] from comment #2)
> I wouldn't call it intended, but it's not trivially addressed. I'm going to
> re-open, because it's a quality issue I think we'll want to track and
> eventually address.

IMO this should be "WONTFIX". Chris, it seems you have a different opinion?

Comment 6

[Lina Butler [:lina]]

We discussed this at triage. I think we can close this out as WONTFIX, since the disconnect case was addressed separately and clearing on shutdown isn't desirable.